


Into The Crunch

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Doctor Who, The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 02:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3674265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Something Missing. What happens when the Doctor goes to extract Vince from non-existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into The Crunch

The Doctor ducked down a convenient alley and shed his fez. Alright. Yes. Time to get a game plan together.

He had to stop and admire a nearby tree, which looked to be made of gaffer tape wrapped around pipe cleaners. Fantastic. Down to the most minute detail, this place was unique.

Stepping delicately over a nearby mouse rave, he ducked inside the police box(didn't even need to bother about the chameleon circuit here.)

Okay, plan. Plan. P-l-a-n plan.

He tapped his fingers on a console. Flying the TARDIS directly into the giant nothing-crevice probably didn't count as a plan, per se. Or particularly smart, come to think of it.

Alright! New plan.

He hovered about dream-Dalston, careful not to jar the moonface from the sky.

It was marvelous. Like a play-world really. It made sense that it was a dual construct, the bimental pyschographical fabric was all too fragile when there was just one dreamer. The dreams turned dark, and then poison.

Like a white worm, the crack sat heavy over Camden. Trendy youngsters thronged around the entrances to clubs like multicolour ants, unmindful of the vacuum roaring above their heads. Typical.

In an escheresque contradiction, the crack appeared to be convex and concave all at once. The Doctor set the controls to hover and then sat with his feet dangling out the door, looking at it.

The crack was white. White, white, white. It was the kind of white that seemed to eat noise, suck up light into itself and dim everything nearby. The moon gave it a wide berth, he noticed.

“ _when you are d' moon, you cannot just step over a crack in the sky like a caterpillar. It is too big, and you fall into the big space inside. So you go around in tiny circles, and your friends, they see this and say 'have you turned into a whirlygig?' but you don't answer, because you've just sicked up over the pacific ocean.”_

The Doctor gave a wide wave to the big placid face. The moon zoomed across the sky, an action that would have resulted in catastrophic tidal motion if it were real.

So, the landscape did react to the crack. It was most certainly a genius loci. But then how had the other dreamer fallen into the crack?

He peered into the crack again. It hurt to look at. It gave off an atonal buzz at all times, hovering just on the edge of perception.

A crack that ate a person and all their permutations, their past, present, and future. Where someone could fall and never have existed—

He didn't want to think about that just now.

He steered closer to the opening. There was no gravitational pull, no sudden suck of pressure urging him in. But there was a compulsion that itched at the base of his skull. Nothing definite, just a niggling feeling that if he just got a little _closer_ , just peered in a little _deeper_ , then maybe, _maybe._..

That was the hook of course. How it snagged people. And Howard's friend, presumably the more outgoing and curious of the two, had probably been pulled in.

As he had when he'd first arrived, the Doctor scanned the crack. And came up with nothing.

That _was_ a bit frightening, truth be told.

It meant two things: either this was a completely unknown, unseen phenomena that had laid low before now, or it was new, brand-new new. Either meant he wasn't at all sure what he'd be sailing into.

If there were someone here, someone to shake some sense into him, they might say “this is a terrible idea.”

He set the controls to fly directly into the crack.

The line of demarcation was equally anticlimactic and ominous: once he passed the threshold the sound cut off completely. No hum, no buzz. The moon stopped mid-babble.

Well. _That_ was encouraging.

He flew on, but the space had no clear boundary between up or down. No walls, no floor that he could see. He tried going up for a while, or at least his impression of up. The sensors indicated an impossible amount of distance, twice the height of the planet, before he gave up and descended again.

Gravity:undetermined.

Air: undetermined.

He flew on without a marker. The crack had disappeared behind him immediately after entering. The walls were white, white, white. He got bored and decided to look at white for a change. Then he played spot the white. Then he played eye spy(something that begins with w? White. Something that begins with b? Blanche. Something that begins with a? Achromatic.)

He assumed he had finally gone mad from boredom when he spotted a shadow off in the distance. When it did not flicker or fade but grew bigger, he was forced to take it seriously.

The shadow became a smear, became a stain on the surrounding white.

It looked like...crayon? Crayon scribbles the size of a train track, he saw as he grew closer. The biggest pack of crayons a boy ever had.

He found a makeshift launchpad: a piece of ground indicated by grass-scribbles. He carefully placed his first footstep outdoors, wary of falling through the grass into nothingness. It held.

“Uhm, er. So in the kingdom of the crabs, they had this cape all made out of beetle wings. And they guarded it in the middle of this great sand castle. But the waves kept dissolving the battlements, so they had to rebuild it constantly...”

The voice was speaking as if it had been briefly interrupted in the middle of telling a story. It was a bit cockney, and sounded subdued. Whoever it was was speaking in their lower register, as if very tired.

The Doctor looked around. There was no apparent source to the voice.

“—disco they'd built in a hedgerow, and all the mice were wearing platforms—”

“Hullo?”

“—Brian Eno implemented a scorched-earth policy, frying them with a secret tone he had discovered while on David Bowie's spaceship—

“ _Hullo_?”

“—held on the great pacific garbage patch, because maritime law would allow them to implement their dress code—”

Nothing. He needed a plan.

Without warning, a crayon pony-drawing appeared at his side and neighed, rearing up. The Doctor dove to the side, screwdriver out.

There was a pause in the voice. Then a bit of a sigh. Then it started speaking again.

“Once there was a lion and a mouse. They were friends. The lion was a bit too tall, and the mouse was a bit dim, and together they were perfect.”

There were more scribbles appearing. They acted out the narration, like a very simple animation made with crayons. The mouse wore drainpipes and cuban heels. The lion wore a porkpie and a hawaiian shirt.

“The lion would scare away everyone, and the mouse always ended up annoying people so they got sick of him. But they were friends. And they built a kingdom together.”

A collage of crisp packets, sweet wrappers, and bus tickets grew into a city. The Doctor gazed in awe, putting a hand out. A crisp bag came away in his hand. It looked, and felt, real. So how had it suddenly appeared?

“Oh, those were good times. They came up with a groovy improv madness that no one would ever match. But then, dark days fell on the kingdom.”

A pause.

“What happened?” the Doctor prompted.

“The Fieldmouse was too curious. He liked sticking his twitchy little nose wherever he could. One day... one day...”

“One day you found a crack, didn't you?” The Doctor stepped closer to the scene. The fieldmouse was teetering on the precipice of a bottomless pit, the lion held him back by his tail.

“One day...”

“You saw something. You looked inside. Then what?”

“Then...”

“He misses you, you know.” The Doctor's voice didn't seem to travel far, it was as if the noise was eaten before it could. “Howard. He hasn't forgotten you. Not completely.”

The voice gave a funny kind of sigh. “Howard.” The name multiplied, spread out in a hissing whisper: _HowardHowardHowardHowardHowardHowardHowardHowardHowardHoward_.

“I can take you back, if you like. I can bring you home.” The Doctor thought a moment. “Can you show yourself?”

“Yourself?” The word was pronounced like something foreign.

The Doctor had a lightbulb. “Can you...draw me the fieldmouse if he were in human form?”

There was a hesitant moment. Then, a think black line began winding its way through his vision. It described a pair of drainpipes, a blinding white shirt and cowboy hat to match, and then the body.

The man depicted was the same height as the Doctor. Black hair, long, artistic fingers, and cowboy boots.

The face was last. It went slower, as if the line was reluctant to draw it. There was a nose, high cheekbones, and a messy fringe. Then the eyes.

They were cerulean blue, so blue it seemed unreal in the blank white hell of their surroundings. The line finished curling through the last bit of eyelash.

The picture blinked.

“Hi,” he said hesitantly.

The Doctor grinned with relief. “Hi, there. Good to see you, finally.”

“It is?” the man tilted his head, lines thickening and thinning with the motion. “Seeing who?”

“You.”

“Who?”

“You. You're...” the Doctor searched for a term, “Howard's friend.”

“Oh yeah, Howard.” the other man managed a grin. “He's genius. He's...” his forehead wrinkled in deep thought.

“He's waiting for you,” the Doctor supplied.

“You?” the other man tilted his head. “Who is 'you'?”

 _Get on that, Howard,_ the Doctor mentally prompted. He smiled.

“Howard's friend. Howard is waiting for his friend. I'd like to bring Howard's friend _to_ him.”

The other man's face lit up in a grin. “Genius. Howard's the best. He's so smart. He used to say, ' _don't go falling in that crack_ —” a sudden puzzled frustration clouded his face, like he'd encountered a knot in the middle of a fishing line.

“Go on,” the Doctor prodded.

“ _'Don't go falling in that crack_ —'” the man gripped his hair in anguish, “' _don't go falling in that crack_ —'”

“Yes?”

He dropped his hands. “Can't think of it.”

The Doctor sighed. “Well, you did your best. Maybe if we get closer to the opening, you'll start coming back to yourself. Come on, let's go.”

“How?”

“I’ve got a ship we can take. I'm sure even in your...condition, we can—”

“How?” the young man cocked his head and looked quizzical.

The Doctor turned. “Here—”

The TARDIS was flat blue crayon.

He gaped.

Everything, even the open doorway, was drawn. The other man now forgotten, the Doctor stepped closer, and placed his hand against the side of the machine.

Relief flooded through him. The wall felt real. It was probably a psychoprojection, because the area was under the influence of the young man. He probably looked no better, but he had no way to examine himself, no mirror, no anything.

He turned back to reassure the other man.

Gone.

The Doctor looked around.

When his concentration had broken, presumably, the thin strand linking him to reality had broken along with it.

Great. Fabulous. Square one again.

He concentrated, trying to summon up the image of the young man. It was slippery, didn't want to be nailed down. The image wanted to dissolve like a bathbomb, fizzing into the aether.

There was something. It wasn't a color or a shape, it was a sound.

Hearing it, the Doctor realized how utterly quiet it had been until this moment. The tone sliced through the nothing like a laser through an ice cube.

The young man's face redrew itself a bit. “V.”

“What?”

“V. ' _don't go falling in that crack, V_ —”

The Doctor waited. “Nothing else?”

The line crawled down into a shirt. “V. V is good. V is...me.”

“Your name begins with V?”

“I begin with V. I'm like an impressionist jacket. I'm a macaroni mosaic of the Mona Lisa. I end where Howard begins.” Hair appeared, and trousers. “He starts where I leave off. We're musical gods, we're the Castor and Polydeuces of the London scene. When Mick and Keith are planning an album, they freebase our sounds.” Color appeared, plumping the image. “I'm the glam, he's the gold. I'm the heart, he's the soul. I'm the rock, he's the roll. Howard and– Howard and–”

“Yes?” the Doctor pressed.

“Vince,” said Vince. “Vince Noir, pop star. Vince Noir, fashion tsar. Vince Noir—”

“Fruit bar?” the Doctor held one out.

“Thanks, I'm famished.” He reached out, and his fingers made contact with the foil wrapper. They were real, flesh-and-blood real.

The Doctor caught hold of them in his hand. “Come with me.”

Vince looked up. His eyes really were an unreal shade of blue.

“Where are we going?”

“Home. Your home,” he added hastily.

Vince looked around. “Where are we now?”

“Nowhere you want to be.”

Vince shivered. The ends of his hair were digressing back into scribble. The Doctor snapped his fingers.

“Vince. You with me?”

Vince snapped back to attention.

“Good. Show us the way out.”

Vince gushed over the interior(“cor, it's like the inside of an old television set!”) and twiddled a few dials before taking up his post in the doorway. He called out directions to the Doctor, who corresponded as best he could. The machine readings were, of course, useless.

There was no great burst, no sudden light to announce that they had made it. There was only a sudden relief, like a cessation of an agony that had been in the background until now.

The Doctor turned. “Here, do you think—”

Vince wasn't there.

No, the Doctor thought as he scrambled over and under equipment, this was not turning out to be a particularly rewarding night.

He stumbled past the open door...and stopped.

It wasn't any one thing he could pick out. But details were changed in the landscape. And the moon burbled freely through the sky, accompanied by what appeared to be Jupiter now.

He hovered over the flat.

A small man dressed like a genie and a ragged gorilla were ascending the steps of the building. Through a window, the Doctor could spy Howard sprawled out untidily on the sofa. Nestled like an afterthought to his side, Vince slept peaceably like he'd been there all along.

 

The Doctor set the controls for the outer rim of the solar system and bid dream-Dalston goodbye. Shame. Nice place to visit, or possibly retire to one day. One day.

They hadn't recognized him, gone right back to dreaming of and for each other. Selfish things. But then, what good human wasn't?

The feeling he always got, like he'd just taken his hands away from coaxing a sparrow to fly, that sudden emptiness shot through with triumph, set in. He didn't think he'd ever get used to it.

Allright. Controls set. Autopilot engaged. Tea brewing.

Was something missing?

He hit a button.

“Saturday Night” started playing in the background.

Grinning, he danced about his work.

 


End file.
